by Ken Follett
There was a burly guard with a gray beard standing at the foot of the keep steps. Aliena made to walk past him, as she had when she came here with her father, but the guard lowered his spear across her path. She looked at him imperiously and said: "Yes?"
"And where do you think you're going, my girl?" said the guard.
Aliena saw, with a sinking feeling, that he was the type of person who liked being a guard because it gave him the chance to stop people from going where they wanted to go. "We're here to petition the king," she said frostily. "Now let us pass."
"You?" the guard said with a sneer. "Wearing a pair of clogs that my wife would be ashamed of? Clear off."
"Get out of my way, guard," said Aliena. "Every citizen has the right to petition the king."
"But the poorer sort generally are not foolish enough to try to exercise that right--"
"We are not the poorer sort!" Aliena blazed. "I am the daughter of the earl of Shiring, and my brother is his son, so let us pass, or you'll end up rotting in a dungeon."
The guard looked a little less bumptious, but he said smugly: "You can't petition the king, because he's not here. He's at Westminster, as you ought to know if you are who you say you are."
Aliena was thunderstruck. "But why has he gone to Westminster? He should be here for Easter!"
The guard realized she was not a street urchin. "Easter court is at Westminster. It seems he's not going to do everything exactly the same as the old king did, and why should he?"
He was right, of course, but the idea that a new king would follow a different timetable had never occurred to Aliena, who was too young to remember when Henry had been the new king. Despair washed over her. She had thought she knew what to do, and she had been so wrong. She felt like giving up.
She shook her head to dispel the sense of doom. This was a setback, not a defeat. Appealing to the king was not the only way to take care of her brother and herself. She had come to Winchester with two purposes, and the second was to find out what had happened to her father. He would know what she should do next.
"Who is here, then?" she said to the guard. "There must be some royal officials. I just want to see my father."
"There's a clerk and a steward up there," the guard replied. "Did you say the earl of Shiring was your father?"
"Yes." Her heart missed a beat. "Do you know anything about him?"
"I know where he is."
"Where?"
"In the jail right here at the castle."
So close! "Where's the jail?"
The guard jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "Down the hill, past the chapel, opposite the main gate." Excluding them from the keep had gratified his mean streak and now he was willing to be informative. "You'd better see the jailer. His name is Odo, and he's got deep pockets."
Aliena did not understand the remark about deep pockets but she was too agitated to clarify it. Until this moment her father had been in a vague, distant place called "prison," but now, suddenly, he was right here in this very castle. She forgot all about appealing to the king. All she wanted to do was see Father. The thought that he was close by, ready to help her, made her feel the danger and uncertainty of the last few months more acutely. She wanted to run into his arms and hear him say: "It's all right, now. Everything's going to be all right."
The keep stood on a rise in one corner of the compound. Aliena turned and looked down at the rest of the castle. It was a motley collection of stone and wood buildings enclosed by high walls. Down the hill, the guard had said; past the chapel--she spotted a neat stone building that looked like a chapel--and opposite the main gate. The main entrance was a gate in the outer wall, permitting the king to come into his castle without first having to enter the city. Opposite that entrance, close to the back wall that separated the castle from the city, was a small stone building that could be the jail.
Aliena and Richard hurried down the slope. Aliena wondered how he would be. Did they give people proper food in jail? Her father's own prisoners had always got horsebread and pottage at Earlscastle, but she had heard that prisoners were sometimes ill-treated elsewhere. She hoped Father was all right.
Her heart was in her mouth as she crossed the compound. It was a big castle but it was crowded with buildings: kitchens, stables, and barracks. There were two chapels. Now that she knew the king was away, Aliena could see the signs of his absence, and she noted them distractedly as she wove her way toward the jail: stray pigs and sheep had wandered in from the suburbs just outside the gate and were rooting around in the rubbish tips, men-at-arms were lolling about with nothing to do but call out insolent remarks to passing women, and there was some kind of betting game going on in the porch of one of the chapels. The atmosphere of laxity bothered Aliena. She was afraid it might mean her father was not looked after properly. She began to dread what she might find.
The jail was a semi-derelict stone building that looked as if it might once have been a house for a royal official, a chancellor or bailiff of some kind, before it fell into disrepair. The upper story, which had once been the hall, was completely ruined, having lost most of its roof. Only the undercroft remained whole. Here there were no windows, just a big wooden door with iron studs. The door stood slightly ajar. As Aliena hesitated outside, a handsome middle-aged woman in a good-quality cloak passed her, opened the door and went in. Aliena and Richard followed her.
The gloomy interior smelled of old dirt and corruption. The undercroft had once been an open storeroom, but it had later been divided into small compartments by hastily built rubble walls. Somewhere in the depths of the building a man was moaning monotonously, like a monk chanting services alone in a church. The area just inside the door formed a small lobby, with a chair, a table and a fire in the middle of the floor. A big, stupid-looking man with a sword at his belt was lackadaisically sweeping the floor. He looked up and greeted the handsome woman. "Good morning, Meg." She gave him a penny and disappeared into the gloom. He looked at Aliena and Richard. "What do you want?"
"I'm here to see my father," Aliena said. "He is the earl of Shiring."
"No, he's not," said the jailer. "He's just plain Bartholomew now."
"To hell with your distinctions, jailer. Where is he?"
"How much have you got?"
"I've no money, so don't bother asking for a bribe."
"If you've no money, you can't see your father." He resumed sweeping.
Aliena wanted to scream. She was within a few yards of her father and she was being kept from him. The jailer was big and he was armed: there was no chance of defying him. But she did not have any money. She had been afraid of this when she saw the woman Meg give him a penny, but that might have been for some special privilege. Obviously not: a penny must be the price of admission.
She said: "I'll get a penny, and bring it to you as soon as I can. But won't you let us see him now, just for a few moments?"
"Get the penny first," the jailer said. He turned his back and went on sweeping.
Aliena was fighting back tears. She was tempted to yell out a message in the hope that her father would hear her; but she realized that a garbled message might frighten and demoralize him: it would make him anxious without giving him any information. She went to the door, feeling maddeningly impotent.
She turned around on the threshold. "How is he? Just tell me that--please? Is he all right?"
"No, he's not," the jailer said. "He's dying. Now get out of here."
Aliena's vision blurred with tears and she stumbled through the door. She walked away, not seeing where she was going, and bumped into something--a sheep or a pig--and almost fell. She began to sob. Richard took her arm, and she let him guide her. They went out of the castle by the main gate, into the scattered hovels and small fields of the suburbs, and eventually came to a meadow and sat on a tree stump.
"I hate it when you cry, Allie," said Richard pathetically.
She tried to pull herself together. She had located her father--that was something. She
had learned that he was sick: the jailer was a cruel man who was probably exaggerating the seriousness of the illness. All she had to do was find a penny, and she would be able to talk to him, and see for herself, and ask him what she should do--for Richard and for Father.
"How are we going to get a penny, Richard?" she said.
"I don't know."
"We've nothing to sell. No one would lend to us. You're not tough enough to steal...."
"We could beg," he said.
That was an idea. There was a prosperous-looking peasant coming down the hill toward the castle on a sturdy black cob. Aliena sprang to her feet and ran to the road. As he drew near she said: "Sir, will you give me a penny?"
"Piss off," the man snarled, and kicked his horse into a trot.
She walked back to the tree stump. "Beggars usually ask for food or old clothes," she said dejectedly. "I never heard of anyone giving them money."
"Well, how do people get money?" Richard said. The question had obviously never occurred to him before.
Aliena said: "The king gets money from taxes. Lords have rents. Priests have tithes. Shopkeepers have something to sell. Craftsmen get wages. Peasants don't need money because they have fields."
"Apprentices get wages."
"So do laborers. We could work."
"Who for?"
"Winchester is full of little manufactories where they make leather and cloth," Aliena said. She began to feel optimistic again. "A city is a good place to find work." She sprang to her feet. "Come on, let's get started!"
Richard still hesitated. "I can't work like a common man," he said. "I'm the son of an earl."
"Not anymore," Aliena said harshly. "You heard what the jailer said. You'd better realize that you're no better than anyone else, now."
He looked sulky and said nothing.
"Well, I'm going," she said. "Stay here if you like." She walked away from him, toward the West Gate. She knew his sulks: they never lasted.
Sure enough, he caught her up before she reached the city. "Don't be cross, Allie," he said. "I'll work. I'm pretty strong, actually--I'll make a very good laborer."
She smiled at him. "I'm sure you will." It was not true, but there was no point in discouraging him.
They walked down the High Street. Aliena recalled that Winchester was laid out and divided up in a very logical way. The southern half, on their right as they walked, was divided into three parts: first there was the castle, then a district of wealthy homes, then the cathedral close and the bishop's palace in the southeast corner. The northern half, on their left, was also divided into three: the Jews' neighborhood, the middle part where the shops were, and the manufactories in the northeast corner.
Aliena led the way down the High Street to the eastern end of the city, then they turned left, into a street that had a brook running along it. On one side were normal houses, mostly wooden, a few partly of stone. On the other side was a jumble of improvised buildings, many of them no more than a roof supported by poles, most of them looking as if they might fall down at any minute. In some cases a little bridge, or a few planks, led across the brook to the building, but some of the buildings actually straddled the brook. In every building or yard, men and woman were doing something that required large quantities of water: washing wool, tanning leather, fulling and dyeing cloth, brewing ale, and other operations that Aliena did not recognize. A variety of unfamiliar smells pricked her nostrils, acrid and yeasty, sulfurous and smoky, woody and rotten. The people all looked terribly busy. Of course, peasants also had a great deal to do, and they worked very hard, but they went about their tasks at a measured pace, and they always had time to stop and examine some curiosity or talk to passersby. The people in the manufactories never looked up. Their work seemed to take all their concentration and energy. They moved quickly, whether they were carrying sacks or pouring great buckets of water or pounding leather or cloth. As they went about their mysterious tasks in the gloom of their ramshackle huts, they made Aliena think of the demons stirring their cauldrons in pictures of hell.
She stopped outside a place where they were doing something she understood: fulling cloth. A muscular-looking woman was drawing water from the brook and pouring it into a huge stone trough lined with lead, stopping every now and again to add a measure of fuller's earth from a sack. Lying in the bottom of the trough, completely submerged, was a length of cloth. Two men with large wooden clubs--called fuller's bats, Aliena recollected--were pounding the cloth in the trough. The process caused the cloth to shrink and thicken, making it more waterproof; and the fuller's earth leached out the oils from the wool. At the back of the premises were stacked bales of untreated cloth, new and loosely woven, and sacks of fuller's earth.
Aliena crossed the brook and approached the people working at the trough. They glanced at her and continued working. The ground was wet all around them, and they worked with their feet bare, she noticed. When she realized they were not going to stop and ask her what she wanted, she said loudly: "Is your master here?"
The woman replied by jerking her head toward the back of the premises.
Aliena beckoned Richard to follow and went through a gate to a yard where lengths of cloth were drying on wooden frames. She saw the figure of a man bent over one of the frames, arranging the cloth. "I'm looking for the master," she said.
He straightened up and looked at her. He was an ugly man with one eye and a slightly hunched back, as if he had been bending over drying frames for so many years that he could no longer stand quite upright. "What is it?" he said.
"Are you the master fuller?"
"I've been working at it nigh on forty year, man and boy, so I hope I'm master," he said. "What do you want?"
Aliena realized she was dealing with the type of man who always had to prove how smart he was. She adopted a humble tone and said: "My brother and I want to work. Will you employ us?"
There was a pause while he looked her up and down. "Christ Jesus and all the saints, what would I do with you?"
"We'll do anything," Aliena said resolutely. "We need some money."
"You're no good to me," the man said contemptuously, and he turned away to resume his work.
Aliena was not going to content herself with that. "Why not?" she said angrily. "We're not scrounging, we want to earn something."
He turned to her again.
"Please?" she said, although she hated to beg.
He regarded her impatiently, as he might have looked at a dog, wondering whether to make the effort of kicking it; but she could tell that he was tempted to show her how stupid she was being and how clever he was by contrast. "All right," he said with a sigh. "I'll explain it to you. Come with me."
He led them to the trough. The men and the woman were pulling the length of cloth out of the water, rolling it as it emerged. The master spoke to the woman. "Come here, Lizzie. Show us your hands."
The woman obediently came over and held out her hands. They were rough and red, with open sores where they had got chapped and the skin had broken.
"Feel those," the master said to Aliena.
Aliena touched the woman's hands. They were as cold as snow, and very rough, but what was most striking was how hard they were. She looked at her own hands, holding the woman's: they suddenly looked soft and white and very small.
The master said: "She's had her hands in water since she was a little 'un, so she's used to it. You're different. You wouldn't last the morning at this work."
Aliena wanted to argue with him, and say that she would get used to it, but she was not sure it was true. Before she could say anything, Richard spoke up. "What about me?" he said. "I'm bigger than both those men--I could do that work."
It was true that Richard was actually taller and broader than the men who had been wielding the fuller's bats. And he could handle a war-horse, Aliena recalled, so he should be able to pound cloth.
The two men finished rolling up the wet cloth, and one of them hoisted the roll onto his shoulder, rea
dy to take it to the yard for drying. The master stopped him. "Let the young lord feel the weight of the cloth, Harry."
The man called Harry lifted the cloth off his shoulder and put it on Richard's. Richard sagged under the weight, straightened up with a mighty effort, paled, and then sank to his knees so that the ends of the roll rested on the ground. "I can't carry it," he said breathlessly.
The men laughed, the master looked triumphant, and the one called Harry took the cloth back, hoisted it onto his own shoulder with a practiced movement, and carried it away. The master said: "It's a different kind of strength, one that comes from having to work."
Aliena was angry. They were mocking her when all she wanted was to find an honest way to earn a penny. The master was thoroughly enjoying making a fool of her, she knew. He would probably keep it up as long as she let him. But he would never employ her or Richard. "Thank you for your courtesy," she said with heavy sarcasm, and she turned and walked away.
Richard was upset. "It was heavy because it was so wet!" he said. "I wasn't expecting that."
Aliena realized she had to stay cheerful, to keep Richard's morale up. "That's not the only kind of work there is," she said as she strode along the muddy street.
"What else could we do?"
Aliena did not answer immediately. They reached the north wall of the city and turned left, heading west. The poorest houses were here, built up against the wall, often no more than lean-to shacks; and because they had no backyards the street was filthy. Eventually Aliena said: "Remember how girls used to come to the castle, sometimes, when there was no room for them at home anymore and they had no husband yet? Father would always take them in. They worked in the kitchens or the laundry or the stables, and Father used to give them a penny on saint's days."
"Do you think we could live at Winchester Castle?" Richard said dubiously.
"No. They won't take people in while the king's away--they must have more people than they need. But there are lots of rich folk in the city. Some of them must want servants."
"It's not man's work."
Aliena wanted to say Why don't you come up with some ideas yourself, instead of just finding fault with everything I say? But she bit her tongue and said: "It only wants one of us to work long enough to get a penny, then we can see Father and ask him what we should do next."